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Posts Tagged ‘Cannibalism by Religion?’

From the time of Moses till the time of the prophet Hezekiah, a period of seven hundred years or more, the Hebrews were idolaters, as their records show. The serpent was reverenced as the Healer of the Nation; they worshipped a bull called Apis, as did the Egyptians; they worshipped the sun, moon, stars, and all the hosts of heaven; they worshipped fire, and kept it burning on an altar, as did the Persians and other nations; they worshipped stones, revered an oak-tree, and bowed down to images; they worshipped a virgin mother and child; they worshipped Baal, Moloch, and Chemosh (names given to the sun), and offered up human sacrifices to them, after which, in some instances, they ate the victims.

As repulsive as the notion may seem, it is a fact that “theophagy”–the technical term for the consumption of a god’s body and blood–has been considered a religious experience worldwide for thousands of years. While certain cults/religions may think that they invented the concept of the Eucharist, and that the Eucharist has nothing whatsoever to do with cannibalism, the ritual of sacrificing a god or goddess and sharing his or her blood and body as a sacrament is an act found throughout the ancient world. The only thing so-called modern religion has done is to maintain the form of the Eucharist in a symbolic rather than literal sense, and for that perhaps we should be grateful.

The Eucharist

“He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him,” so the alleged founder of Christianity, Jesus Christ, purportedly said (Jn. 6:55). It may seem abhorrent to the Christians of today that one of their most precious rituals actually has its roots in the cannibalistic sacrifice and consumption of their deity. This origin, however, is the fact.

Far from being a Christian invention, the ritual of the Eucharist has been practiced for millennia by various cults and sects around the globe. Initially, thousands of years before the Christian myth was established, an actual human being, acting as proxy for the deity worshipped, was sacrificed and eaten by the cult’s followers. In some cases, more than one person was killed and consumed in this matter. This nauseating behavior went on throughout the ancient world, and the words regarding this act–“For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.” (Jn. 6:55), etc.–spuriously attributed to the mythical Jesus were generally part of the ritual. As can be seen in the Hebraicized texts now called the Old Testament, an animal or animals were often substituted in place of a human. Apparently, some peoples eventually found the ritual murder of their king or other representative to be repugnant, yet human sacrifice was practiced by the Jews until the time of the Romans, who sought to put an end to it. As we know, in Christianity the theophagous act is now purely symbolic, but it was not always this way in the predecessor religions that contributed to the formation of Christianity. Also, the sacrifice of animals as a religious rite still goes on in various parts of the world, as, indeed, does human sacrifice.

No matter how far away from it we wish to get, theophagy used to signify the actual dismemberment and consumption of a human being. The Eucharist was a cannibalistic act, plain and simple. Just remember that every time you go to church and drink that wine and eat that bread.